Fishing in Lilliputian Style!

Fished a tiny stream on Sunday – the day was warm with a forecast of rain – it began to cloud over by midday – the rain never arrived. The stream was in a gorge and for once there was no burnt out cars (although strangely still an exhaust). I fished with Paul the KAA Secretary before checking some permits on the Kelvin.

Fishing this small stream made you get down and dirty and think about your presentation, casting and your stealth. The trout were never big and some were certainly par – some were true brown trout and were absolutely gorgeous.

Casting was difficult; the gorge has trees up either side so roll casting was pretty essential for most of the small pools. Every now and again I would forget and my fly would be in a tree.

We found some surprises in deeper pools which came up to above the waist when waded through – in these pools we spotted trout which were a lot bigger – possible between a quarter and half a pound – real monsters for small streams – these trout were super spooky and it would only take a few casts to spook them and they would stop rising. I think I missed more trout than I caught, in fact I don’t think I know!

The gorge itself was stunning – with small cliffs at some parts with dark peaty water – ideally I would like to see what this river fished like after a spate and dropping – it would make some of the pools even more fishable and maybe spread out the trout.

I stuck to a couple of tried and tested flies – a small comparadun (using cdc instead of deer hair) and a deer hair emerger – I used my Orvis Superfine with a 4 weight line – thinking about it I could have overlined to make presentations at short distances easier.

The river probably only gets fished by a few people every season – and for good reason – hard fishing to spooky trout – fantastic fun though!

I had one kinda spooky moment – I was fishing a small pool and heard some noises behind me up an embankment in the bushes – it sounded like thuds. I thought maybe Paul had got out the river to walk up the bank to join me and listened to it for a few more minutes – I then fished on waiting for him to come out – I was then hit with intense heebie jeebies – what if it was not Paul (I watch far too many X- File repeats) – I called out however there was no answer – I moved up a pool and away from the noise and possible strange slithering thumping brain sucking creature which was probably a hedgehog.